When undertaking design and technology activities, children are provided with opportunities to create solutions to problems in new and innovative ways. The mental processes involved in the generation of new ideas may be enhanced when children's attention is not focussed and is allowed to wander in a relaxed and uncompetitive environment. Research…

Given the unrelenting pressures of school management, how can principals and superintendents devote the time or resources to do much of anything that deviates from addressing the basic needs of schools? What are the levers that school leaders can use to infuse creativity and innovation into the cultural fabric of their organizations? In this…

This article explores the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) on the behavior of teachers and school leaders, specifically the centralizing, standardizing tendencies of the legislation, and juxtaposes their reactions to the types of teaching and leadership required to lead 21st-century schools. The authors argue that the isomorphic…

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to determine current in-service needs of agricultural faculties at Razi University in Kermanshah province in Iran. A descriptive research methodology design was used to conduct the study. The target population of the study consisted of all agricultural faculties in College of Agriculture at Razi…

This book, published in 1987, provides open-ended activities to extend the imagination and creativity of students and encourage them to examine their feelings and values. Williams' model of cognitive-intellective and affective-feeling domains are addressed. Nearly 60 pages of exercises focus on the future, asking students to predict future…

The research circle is a form of cooperation between trade unions and researchers that is spreading all over Sweden and beyond its national borders. The research circles described in this book were arranged jointly by SKAF (Swedish Municipal Workers' Union) and the Uppsala University Department of Education. A research circle is a study circle in…

This 9-week curriculum unit on trees is designed for gifted students in grades 1-5. The lessons are designed for 40-minute classes meeting two or three times a week and stress the development of creative thinking skills, creative problem solving and decision making skills, and critical and logical thinking skills. Each of the 12 lesson plans…

This is one of a four-volume series intended to improve students' (grade 6-adult) critical thinking through evaluation of conflicting viewpoints of United States history. Each lesson is a self-contained problem that can be integrated at any point in a corresponding history unit. The book represents both analytical and narrative history. Unit One…

Structured Team Problem Solving (STePS) is a problem solving model for shared decision making. This project uses the model to discover if children can learn using this method, and what adaptations would be necessary for child use. Sixth grade students in their social studies class worked together in teams (6-8) to identify what they already think…

Second and third grade students used the creative problem solving strategy developed by Sidney Parnes and Alex Osborn in their social studies classes. The second graders, finding few biographies written for students reading on a first or second grade level, interviewed community members, collected photographs of them, and wrote their biographies,…

The study investigates the goals of arts education and measures the learning effects. Since the status of arts education is controversial, the question is, what does arts education provide for children? The report comprises four studies: (1) a review of the various conceptions of arts education advanced in literature; (2) interviews with teachers…

Courses designed to teach problem-solving and creativity, which are relatively new additions to college curricula, are discussed, along with their intellectual foundations and research on these two processes. The teaching of these processes involves the following course goals: teaching a specific subject, generally useful skills, and professional…

This project developed as an effort to investigate how the school could become more actively involved in educational innovation. This final report highlights work conducted over the period 1972-75 in the nineteen Organization for Economic Cooperation and Innovation member countries that took part in the project. The first two chapters summarize…

The new trend in writing instruction is toward "content area writing"--the rhetorical situations and composing problems that students will face in their non-English courses and in their professions. The focus of content writing instruction should be to prescribe the inventional techniques that are common to all forms of writing, and to…